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Under the scope

Iím making my promise to get some activity around here and make Codbarley happy[Disclaimer to the crawly-sensitive viewers, thereís going to be LOT of close-up images of bugs here.]

So right now, Iím doing a masters in biology Ė a lot of field trip and stuff here! ITs' pretty tiring but mega fun. My lab is currently working on the parasite ecology of a local bat species: Itís all you need to know, really. My main job at the lab right now is to sort the parasites we collected by gender and species and naturally, sexing tiny bugs would require looking at their behinds all day long...

Tyle, proud observer of little insect butts.

Anyways, those arenít important. Whatís important is that I now have full access to and every reason to use the labís stereo/dissection microscope Ė unlike a Ďconventionalí microscope, this comes in a lower magnification but you can shove whatever that fits under the stage without preparing a slide. Very useful for, uh, looking at little insect butts.
Okay, okay. Aside from that, itís just that I now have access to look at almost anything in high magnification. Iíll skip to the images right away.

Mealworm beetle, freshly emerged from its pupal stage

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Newborn ramshorn snails, still in their egg sacs

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A hawk moth(species unknown) from one of my labmates/classmates. She likes to look for interesting dead insects and pin them in her collections(she has a whole case of them). This particular moth was found outside of our lab but barely alive so she literally had to wait for it to die before pinning it. Freezer was considered.

Spoiler for image:

My watch, a birthday gift from my parents. Not an insect.

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And here's where the fun is - feel free to suggest anything you want a microscopic view of. If it fits under there and I can find it, I can probably get you an image asap.

Unfortunately, I simply don't have any cool rock samples with me right now, but as a fellow mad scientist I can provide the next best thing...

Shells!

Spoiler for shell master post:

Small piece of the skeleton of a coral.

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Piece of a nacre - the inner layer of a shell. It's one of the coolest loots I've ever got from my trips, but unfortunately it was too brittle (the layers flakes off when lightly scratched) to be make into decorative crafts.

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]

Old shells that had been washed and polished in the water for too long, all there left is the center of the shell that forms a little pebble with spiral pattern. I like to jokingly call them soul cores
Curiously though, I only started finding these pebbles in the beaches of Taiwan, never seeing or noticing them back home. I wonder if this has anything to do with the waters?

Beetle of a Zophobas morio, commonly known as superworm - basically just a supersized version of mealworms. It got mixed into our lab's mealworm supply as larvae when bought and I took it home as a pet, but unfortunately died when I returned from HK after a 10-day holiday.

I'm BAAAAAAAAACK
We went places during my summer break and went to a museum place, dad and I both bought neat rocks and fossils, woo!

A labradorite! The shop sells rocks and stones by weight and let you pick yours from a basket, I'm glad I got my hands on this before anyone else, and for a discount too!

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Look at them stripes man, I suspect the reason they put this with the rest instead of displaying it and selling it for a high price is because of them - doesn't matter, I think they look really neat.

Behold, a genuine helix fossil.

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It's dad's.

My dad also bought another tree fossil from the same store the next day - he likes fossils in general but trilobite is his favorite.

Spoiler for images:

Originally Posted by Tyle's dad, after mom tipped a group of street performers double the price of this fossil

I could have bought another with that much money ;A;

Last but not least,

Apologies to Cody for TAKING SO DANG LONG and the general shakiness of the video, it's not easy filminng with microscope <:v Unfortunately I didn't managed to get the crystallization phenomenon you mentioned - could be the quality of my bread and honey - but I still managed to get the footage of honey pouring into the bread pores, it looks pretty nice!